Book Reviews Archives -

How Beautiful We Were

About the Author Imbolo Mbue

Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers. The novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries.

How Beautiful We Were, is about what happened when a fictional African village decided to fight against an American oil company that had been polluting its land for many years.

A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Mbue lives in New York.

– from the author’s website

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Brown Girl In The Ring

About the Author Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor. As of 2013, she lived and taught in Riverside, California. Her novels and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. – Wikipedia

now for my review

Set in a near dystopian Toronto, Ti-Jeanne tries to find herself and decide what she wants to do with her life separate from her Mami and maybe also from her child’s father who is just a good looking plum fool.

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Shadow And Bone Trilogy

About the Author

Leigh Bardugo is a New York Times bestselling author and the creator of the Grishaverse which starts with the Shadow and Bone Trilogy. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.For information on new releases and appearances, sign up for her newsletter

now for my review

This series is the first in the Grishaverse and so my introduction. Set in the nation of Ravka, the shadow fold which was created by magic is expanding and will eat up the nation if not stopped. The world-building seems to draw on Russian folklore. Overall I enjoyed this, it was an easy fantasy read and a good introduction to fantasy if you’re looking to get into the fantasy genre. It was a quick and easy read and it got me out of my funk.

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If You Want To Make God Laugh

About the Author Bianca Marais

Bianca Marais is the author of Hum If You Don’t Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh.

She holds a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, where she now teaches creative writing. She runs the Eunice Ngogodo Own Voices Initiative to empower young black women in Africa to write and publish their own stories. Find out more on her site here.

Find an interview with Bianca Marais by Jeanbooknerd here.

now for my review

This book is set just at the point of transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa and Nelson Mandela elected as the first Black president.

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SLAY

About the Author Brittney Morris

Brittney Morris holds a BA in Economics from Boston University. She holds a BA in economics. Brittney spends her spare time playing video games, slaying at DDR, and enjoying the Seattle rain from her apartment. You can find her online on Twitter and Instagram @BrittneyMMorris. Read an interview done by ‘we need diverse books’ here.

now for my review

Kiera Johnson is a seventeen-year-old honor student at Jefferson Academy and also one of the few Black students at the school. Kiera is a game developer and she created an online game for Nubian Kings and Queens called SLAY. The game maintains and strives on anonymity to preserve the game space for like-minded people and also to protect people’s identity. No one in Kiera’s life knows about this game or that she is the founder/developer, not even her boyfriend Malcolm.

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A Very Large Expanse of Sea

About the author Tahereh Mafi

Tahereh Mafi is an Iranian-American author based in Santa Monica, California. She is the author of The Shatter Me series. Find the interview with the Los Angeles Times about her book A very large expanse of sea here.

now for my review

This book is set after the 9/11 targedy in the United States and it follows an Iranian-American teenage girl Shirin. Shirin is a Muslim girl who enjoys wearing a Hijab but as you can already tell, people’s Islamophobia was really strong and the media didn’t help one bit. Well, they (the media) usually don’t help.

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Happiness, Like Water

About the Author Chinelo Okparanta

Chinelo Okparanta is a Nigerian-American writer. She was born in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria, and emigrated to the United States with her family at the age of ten. She received her Bachelors’s degree from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a winner of a 2014 Lambda Literary Award, a 2016 Lambda Literary Award, the 2016 Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award in Fiction, the 2016 Inaugural Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle, and a 2014 O. Henry Prize. For more about her visit her website here.

Now for my review

Beautiful, brilliantly written. This is an ode to Nigerian women suffrage, especially with conformity. This book comprises of ten short stories with six out of the ten where based in Nigeria and the other four based in America. All ten stories focus on Nigerian women. I will briefly highlight each story below.

On Ohaeto Street: this is the story of how a woman named Chinwe ended up in a marriage her mother convinced her to get into. She ends up leaving him, maybe because she realized she had been giving away pieces of herself to please her mother or maybe because she realized that she didn’t want a marriage in which her husband wasn’t putting in any effort to be her husband. Nigerian parents especially mothers are notorious for forcing/influencing their daughters to marry a man they think is good for them, always wanting to have some form of control over it. The sad part is that most of them do this convincing themselves it’s the right thing and not meaning harm.

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These Ghosts Are Family

About the Author Maisy Card

Maisy was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, but was raised in Queens, New York. Maisy Card is a writer and a public librarian. Her debut novel, These Ghosts are Family, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize. You can watch an interview with Maisy here.

Now for my review

It starts with Abel Paisley who faked his death and became Stanford Solomon, leaving his old life behind which includes a wife and two children in Jamacia to forge a better life for himself in the United States. Abel Paisley was a cowardly man with responsibilities he didn’t really want and so when he saw an oppuntunity to escape it all and start over he did.

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My Dark Vanessa

About the Author Kate Elizabeth Russell

Kate Elizabeth Russell is originally from eastern Maine but now resides in Madison, Wisconsin. She has an MFA from Indiana University and a PhD from the University of Kansas.Her debut novel, My Dark Vanessa, was published in 2020 and became a national bestseller. Fun fact, Kate started working on this book from her teens. You can find a video interview with Kate about My Dark Vanessa here.

Now for my review

My God this was intense. Brilliantly written.

The story follows Vanessa Wye from when she was fifteen years old until her early thirties. It explores the pedophilic grooming process she went through from the hands of her teacher and the psychological effects thereafter.

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The Vanishing Half

About the author Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett is an American writer, she graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English. Both of her books The Mothers and The Vanishing Half are both New York Times best sellers. Her book The Vanishing Half has been picked up by HBO to be made into a mini series. Brit has also written several essays, find them here.

Now for my review (may contain small spoilers)

If you’re part of the bookish community, then you’d know that this book has been making the rounds and it’s really hyped. So, I couldn’t help but read it and I must say it did not disappoint.

The story centers on the split lives of twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes who ran away from home at sixteen in search of better lives. However, Stella decides to pass as White, marry a white man, and never look back while Desiree marries the Darkest man she can find and embrace her blackness. They couldn’t be more different is they tried. The different paths the lives of the sisters take reflects the racial inequalities that we still see today.

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